How much money is raised privately and privately given to charity in the US annually

Factual Questions
1

I assume the number is over $100 billion, does anyone have any way to measure it for sure?

2

http://www.acton.org/ppolicy/comment/article.php?id=144

According to Giving U.S.A.’s annual report, published by the American Association of Fundraising Counsel (AAFRC), Americans gave an estimated $240.92 billion to charity in 2002.

http://www.aafrc.org/press_releases/index.cfm?pg=trustreleases/americansgive.html

American individuals, estates, foundations, and corporations gave an estimated $240.72 billion to charitable causes in 2003, according to Giving USA 2004, a study released by Giving USA Foundation.

That was easy. Thanks Wesley.

3

Which equals about 2% of our GDP. A little thin maybe?

4

Yeah it is a little light. But we also have charity in the form of taxation which adds another 2 trillion or so to the number (I personally don’t see much of a difference between private charity money going to a hospital or a school vs tax money going to a hospital or a school) so it is probably closer to 22%.

That 2 trillion figure is based on what i’ve read on spending for education, healthcare and social security in the US which is $850, 800 & 500 billion respectively and that is not including the other taxed charitable venues like HUD, AFDC, etc. It may be closer to 25% or so of GDP when you include taxation.

5

Add in money donated to other countries and the services provided by our military, and the percent of GDP is quite substantial.

6

wonderwench writes:

> . . . money donated to other countries . . .

What does this mean? Foreign aid given by the U.S. government to other countries? That’s less than half of one percent of the federal budget, something like 15 billion dollars, so much less than the amount given to charities. Or do you mean the money donated to charity in the U.S. that goes to foreign countries? That’s a small percent of the total amount given to charities. Half of the money given to charities in the U.S. goes to churches and one third goes to educational institutions in the U.S.

7

Nah, its not. That is a common misconception in the US

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2093

Myth 3: Foreign aid is a big slice of the federal budget.

A recent poll by the Program for International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland showed that most Americans still imagine that 20 percent of the federal budget goes to foreign aid. In reality, less than 1 percent of the budget is for foreign aid, and only about one-third of that is development assistance.

http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/BFW/finding1.html

Americans continue to vastly overestimate how much of the federal budget goes to aid…Nonetheless, the median estimate was 20% of the budget-more than 20 times the actual amount (a bit less than 1%). The mean estimate was even higher, at 24%

We spend maybe $20 billion in direct foreign aid, I have no idea what military foreign aid is but its is probably under $10 billion.